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I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.

I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.

I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.

I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.

Writing novels is where I'm most comfortable. It's a very intimate experience.

I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer.

Love of place is one of the characteristics I enjoy most about novelists.

I don't very often read novels.

Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.

I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.